As if “Veronica Mars” weren’t enough, this week’s new movie releases also include a German TV show that is playing in theaters here: “Generation War.”

Set in Berlin and the Eastern Front with Russia during World War II, “Generation War” follows five friends through the war years. Brothers in the same battalion, a Jewish man who goes undercover, a nurse and a sexy singer all experience quick disillusionment with their roles in Hitler’s war. Reconnecting through a series of wildly coincidental events that make it seem like the entire war was fought by these five people, they ultimately learn that those who fail to stand up to evil become part of it.

I suspect “Generation War” played better on television, where the coincidences would be spaced out more evenly and where expectations would be different than they are for a monumental, 4-1/2-hour film. But, even with those caveats, it makes for compelling viewing because it feels new to see these events from the point of view of German citizens who — at least at first — aren’t fazed by Hitler’s rise to power.

“Generation War” is more visually distinguished than many TV shows we get in the U.S., with hallucinatory images such as a field turned swampy by blood and a corpse frozen in mid-gesture. There’s also a strong sense of what it must have been like for Germans to see the world changing in front of their eyes. Overall, it has its flaws but there’s no denying the power of the ending of “Generation War.”

By that point, we have spent so much time with these five that we are deeply invested in their fates. Plus, there’s our sad realization that wartime lessons have been forgotten in the intervening 70 years.

Finally, “Generation War” suggests, enemies had to reach out to each other or this war might have been as endless as several subsequent ones have been.

Chris Hewitt was the Pioneer Press movie critic and then an arts and entertainment reporter from 1993 to 2017.

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